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Strength-Based Restorative Justice Assessment Tools for Youth: Addressing a Critical Gap in the Juvenile Justice System

Status: complete

The objectives of the validation study were 1) to evaluate the psychometric properties of the strengths assessment tool developed as part of this project, including its factor structure, internal consistency (reliability), item distributions and variances, and inter-observer and test-retest reliability; 2) to ensure the fidelity of the strength-based approach by evaluating the extent to which juvenile justice staff actually implemented the entire assessment protocol in a manner consistent with a strengths-based and restorative justice framework; 3) to evaluate the cultural, gender, and age relevance of the assessment protocol; and 4) to ensure the usefulness of the protocol in a field setting by collecting information from a diverse sample of field staff from jurisdictions across the country regarding scoring, ease of administration, problems, and suggestions for improvement. The outcome study addressed whether the strength-based protocol did, in fact, lead to better juvenile justice outcomes for youth.